Lloyd
williamsIN JAMAICA a Coroner's inquest is not the easiest case to dispose of - if it ever gets off the ground. And for several reasons. And even when an inquest actually starts, there is no telling when it is likely to be concluded.
Take for example the tragedy which befell Andrea Dennis, 38, and Gerald, 42, her husband, almost four years ago. Their three-year-old son, Gervis, was shot dead by the police on the back porch of their house. A Coroner's inquest into his death began a year and nine months ago. The parents say they have been to the inquest 17 times, and to them, it seems nowhere near conclusion.
In fact, informed sources say, the Coroner (Resident Magistrate) who started the inquest is no longer in the system so there might very well be a "de novo" - a new start to it.
Sunday, June 29, 1997 started out as just another run-of-the mill day for the Dennises and their five children at their humble home at 47 Australia Road in the depressed inner-city community of Olympic Gardens, Kingston 11.
Around 12 noon, Andrea was sitting on a wooden bench in the shade of a big guinep tree in the dirt yard at the back of the pink zinc-roofed house, passing time with some of her children and taking a break from her never-ending chores as a homemaker.
Gerald is a carpenter but when jobs are scarce he turns to dutch-pot making to put food on the table for his family. He had just gone into a room to get his machete to chop up the meat for their Sunday dinner.
Suddenly, gunfire broke out nearby. After a minute or so, a friend who was some distance from him in the yard and could see the shooters (who were not within Gerald's view), shouted to him to put down the machete. He obeyed instantly then stepped back from the kitchen onto the tiny back porch. Then hell began.
He said he found bullets flying all around him and realised that he was at the centre of seemingly endless gunfire. Mere inches from him, the bullets blasted off a door lock, repeatedly punctured a sheet of zinc nailed onto the porch to prevent infants falling off, shattered objects in the bedroom and pockmarked the house walls. They dug holes into the concrete wall of the porch just inches from him, but miraculously left him physically unscathed. But Gervis was not to be so lucky.
Andrea recalled having seen a police jeep speed from Australia Road south onto Balcombe Drive shortly before. She scooped up their younger children and started running around the front of the house, hoping to push them through a front window to safety. But, as she tells it, "The shooting was worse inside the house" as she could hear bullets zinging inside. It was too much for her and the infants. She stopped right where she was. Later, she found windows smashed and pots, plates, curtains and sheets on beds, damaged.
Their infant son, Gervis, who was three years and two months old, was standing, frightened, on the porch by his father.
Mr. Dennis takes up the story: "I was standing right here. I was so panic I couldn't move. I hear an explosion. I hear something lick. When I look right at my foot I saw my little baby (Gervis). He called out to me, 'Dennis!' He put one finger in his mouth and one in his hair and I grabbed him and run into the bathroom (right by the porch).
"In the bathroom shots just keep going, going, going, going. Bullets hit the bathroom door too. I was so frightened. This is a troublesome area but 'is the first in my life I ever hear so much shots fire in such quick succession.
"I look at the baby and saw his finger drop out of his mouth and his head drop down. (At this point Mr. Dennis, almost four years after the awful incident, paused to regain his composure.) I called his name and there was no sound. I realised that he was shot in his side. If the baby never call my name and I move I would be a dead man ..."
Pointing to some of his children, who had stopped playing with their puppies or romping with one another to check on the stranger talking with their parents, Mr. Dennis said, "I thought everybody died because I didn't hear any crying, only gunshots. I didn't know what to do. I bawl out, 'Lord God, them murder mi baby'. When I said that, all gunshots stop ... I run out and I see my wife 'round the front. I look on her and say 'Gervis dead'. She said she couldn't believe it.
(All this time Mr. Dennis was cradling a limp Gervis in his arms).
"I go out in the street. I see two police jeeps park up there. I bawl out for 'Murder!'. One with two police reverse and they put me in the jeep. They said they going to hospital".
"The jeep break down on Retirement Road. Is a taxi they get and carry me and the baby to hospital. I end up at the KPH and I see them try all kinds of things with the baby. Afterwards they took him off the bed and put him in an ambulance. I go with the ambulance. There was nothing on him so I know that he died.
"I hear all sort of argument about how the baby died. I heard on the news that he was used by a gunman as a shield. But that's not true. 'Is in my arms the baby die".
Looking back last week at the incident, Mr. Dennis reckons he could have been killed at another time that day. He said that after the jeep broke down, they transferred to the taxicab and after it drove a short distance, the policeman who was holding the mortally wounded infant realised that he had left his M16 assault rifle in the jeep.
He stopped the cab and sent him (Dennis) for it. "I jumped out the jeep and run and pick it up and run back with it to the jeep. The policeman take it from me and give me back the baby". He often wonders what would have happened if a passing police patrol had seen him running with the M16 assault rifle in his hand.
"I feel it very much, you know. Every day when I think of him I cry. Gervis would be seven years old now".
Mr. Dennis said that if he had been shot that afternoon while he had the machete in his hand, the story would have been that he had attacked the police "and nothing would come out of it".
After the shooting the police went into the Dennises' yard and their house and picked up several bullet fragments and cartridge casings, they said.
The infant was not buried until August 13; the government stood the expenses.
It was after the shooting had stopped that the Dennises found out what the gunfire had been about. The police had targeted Richard "Indian" Maragh, 19, who they said had been wanted for questioning about several crimes. He ran through the Dennises' backyard and jumped over the zinc fence which is common to the backyards of houses in the community, and into another yard where the police cornered him and shot him dead.
The police said then that a team from the Special Anti-Crime Task Force went to the area, five gunmen fired at them, they returned the fire and when the shooting stopped they searched the area and found a man named Richard Maragh with bullet wounds.
The police said that Gervis was killed in a crossfire but the Dennises say that at the time Gervis was shot, nobody had been firing at the police either from their yard or from their house.
The inquest into Gervis Dennis's death actually started on June 21, 1999, more than two years after Gervis was killed. So far, his parents say, they have been 17 times to the Coroner's Court, Sutton Street, Central Kingston, which is conducting the inquest into the infant's death. And they don't know how many times they may have to go back. "It is very frustrating", Mr. Dennis says.
The reason for the adjournments? "Police witnesses are just not showing up", Mrs. Dennis said.
"When we go to court, the police don't turn up, so the case can't get to go on even after almost four years", she says with understandable frustration. "Sometimes they say the police are on leave or they have been transferred. The Coroner subpoenas them but they still are not coming (to the inquest).
But another source who is knowledgeable about the case said it was not only police witnesses who had not been turning up. Sometimes civilian witnesses did not turn up either.
The source said that in recent times, for example, several policemen had resigned or had been dismissed or transferred. The police usually involved in Coroner's inquest, were usually the "operations-type" people who were sent on raids to find wanted men and in some cases over the years, some of those very policemen had been killed in those operations. In such circumstances, their cases did not die with them, but it took time for replacements to be found for them and for those replacements to get to court to give evidence in the relevant cases. "It's not an easy court", the source said.
Lloyd Williams is senior Associate Editor at the Gleaner.
